When will people bloody well learn!
Up to 5 per cent of Africa’s elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory
each year, according to research which suggests that poaching threatens the
animals with extinction despite a global ban on the sale of ivory.
More than 23 tonnes of illegal ivory were seized between August 2005 and last
August, most of it from recently killed elephants. Scientists believe that
the true weight of smuggled tusks is ten times greater.
This would mean that about 234 tonnes of ivory were exported from Africa that
year and about 23,000 elephants were killed. Continued poaching on this
scale would drive the species rapidly to extinction.
Samuel Wasser, of the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the study,
said the seizures suggested that poaching was taking place on a scale unseen
since 1989, when an international convention banned the ivory trade.
The trend is being driven by growing demand in the Far East, and organised
crime is becoming increasingly involved, Dr Wasser said. The black market
price of a kilogram of good quality ivory was about $100 in 1989, and had
doubled by 2004. However, last year a smuggled kilogram, was fetching $750
(£395), raising the financial incentive for poaching.
Make the trade illegal and you hand it over to the criminals. Sheesh, it’s not that tough an idea is it?
There are areas of Africa where elephants are culled, officially. Sell the ivory from there and reduce the pressure on the other herds. Jeez, blanket bans simply don’t work, as we know from our own insane drug laws.
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